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Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Congress is a Blur of Activity
As the clock winds down on the 110th Congress, legislators are working at a furious pace this week, vetting financial bailout proposals, passing tax and spending legislation, holding oversight hearings, etc. All the things that Congress is supposed to do on a regular basis. It's just quite shocking to see them actually doing it.
So, here's a quick rundown on where things stand.
Senate
Yesterday the Senate took three votes on tax cut proposals (see details in this Watcher article), passing two of them. The first was compiled by both Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and his counterpart on the committee Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and is a $68.1 billion package to extend tax cuts and provide an Alternative Minimum Tax patch. This proposal also included $25.2 billion in revenue raising offsets. This bill passed 93-2. The second proposal was $18.3 billion in energy tax incentives that was full paid for by increasing taxes on the oil and gas industry. This also passed 93-2. These bill were both sent to the House today. While it originally looked as though the House would break apart the first proposal and pass AMT relief seperately, House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) announced this afternoon he would postpone consideration of the tax bills to attempt to make some changes that will "take more time than just today."
House
The House finished off their work yesterday by passing a reconciled version of the FY 2009 Defense Authorization bill that passed the Senate last week. House and Senate leaders dropped provisions in the bill that drew a veto threat from President Bush, including restrictions on using private contractors for security functions in combat zones and allowing contract employees to participate in detainee interrogations. The bill will now be sent back to the Senate for final approval, which is expected.
While the House was voting on the authorization bill on the floor, appropriators were busy drawing up the details of a massive appropriations bill that combines three bills (Defense, Homeland Security, and Military Construction-VA) into one bill, includes a continuing resolution funding the rest of the government through March 6, 2009, and also includes $22.9 billion in emergency funding for disaster relief. The House Rules Committee approved the bill for consideration Tuesday night by a vote of 9-4. The total pricetag for this bill is $600.6 billion, almost 60 percent of the entire discretionary budget outlined in this year's budget resolution. The proposal includes limited additional items, but does appropriate $5.1 billion for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program and $7.5 billion to support a $25 billion loan program to U.S. automakers.
Given the current status of this jumbling of legislation and the pending action needed on some kind of fiscal bailout, I can't see any way at all that Congress will adjourn on Friday (the 26th) as they have planned to hit the campaign trail. I've seen snippets of rumors that the House and Senate are thinking about hanging around for the weekend, but they really need more time than that. Now that McCain is suspending his campaign outside of Washington so he can come to Washington and continue to campaign, don't you think members of Congress could stick around at least one more week?
Posted by Adam Hughes
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